Fred Who?

I suppose I’ve been a communicator all my life. As a child I talked a lot. As an adult, I put it to good use for seventeen years in sales and marketing. My friends always said I could probably sell refrigerators to Eskimos, which might explain the period of global cooling we’ve been experiencing. They also said that where I really belonged was on the radio. Now I know why.

At the tender age of thirty-eight I embarked on a new career and broke into broadcasting, both because it was a long standing secret desire and because everyone encouraged me so enthusiastically. As a good friend put it after I was on the air for a few years, “All this time we’ve been trying to figure out how to shut you up and now, with a simple ten-cent knob — CLICK!”

Twenty more years, several radio gigs [mostly New York and Philly] and my own commercial production business have catapulted by since that observation and they’ve all been successful, so I guess somebody wanted to listen. Today, I find myself living in a log home on a country hillside in the northeastern U.S.A. with an incredible wife, a big brown Lab, a small spotted rescue and several finned and feathered creatures. It’s true: you don’t have to take a goldfish for a walk.

Four children are a different story. They joined forces to turn me into the world’s youngest grandpa’ a few years ago and with eight grandchildren, I’m running out of knees to bounce them on. I still wonder who the heck that is looking out at me from the mirror and just noticed I’ve reduced my entire life to four paragraphs.

The kid living within, the stranger in the looking glass, and the blur of changes that have marked the march of time tell me that you may be experiencing many of the same feelings as I — and that’s why I’m grateful for the opportunity to communicate with you through Bananas, Crackers and Nuts.

Looking back, I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world! Of course, nobody has offered it yet.